Star Trek the Next Generation Episode Review: "Relics"

A review of the season 4 episode that first aired in October of 1992.

While investigating a Dyson sphere, the crew of the Enterprise discovers the wreckage of a 75-year-old cargo ship on the surface. When they check it out, they discover the ship's engineering chief, Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), in a frozen transporter stasis. When he is brought on board the Enterprise, the former Enterprise chief engineer finds the adjustment difficult.

Better Than Expected

When I first came across this particular episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, my first impression was it was a desperate attempt to give this series some sort of connection with the original Star Trek series. And, in many ways, I was somewhat correct about that. However, as it turns out, this episode was so much more than that.

The part about the Dyson sphere was something that really made this episode worth watching. Not only was there a big mystery about what the sphere was, there was also the whole part about the Enterprise getting caught inside of it and needing someone to rescue it. This was actually much more interesting than I was expecting it to be and I did find myself wondering just how they would find a way out of it.

I was somewhat concerned the scenes with Doohan's "Scotty" character would get to be a bit sappy and, there were some moments when I was afraid I was going to be right about it, especially when he and Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) were sitting on the holodeck version of the original Enterprise command deck. However, as it turns out, those sappy moments were actually kept to a reasonable amount of moderation. I especially liked the scene at the bar when he and Data (Brent Spiner) were trying to figure out what kind of beverage was under the counter and, ultimately, Data had to describe it as "green."

The scene with him and La Forge (LeVar Burton) was somewhat predictable, especially when they were on board the old ship and ultimately ended up bonding over their joint effort to rescue the Enterprise. However, at the same time, I honestly can't think of a better way to bring a happy conclusion to the episode and, as a result of that, can't criticize it too much. And, when the rest of the episode is taken into consideration, I was OK with it.